This is a review of the desk accessory "Smart Alarms" by JAM (from Australia), distributed by Imagine, Inc. It was bundled in a group of software given to AMUG for review. I used it on a MacPlus, with an 80 Meg hard disk (Jasmine Direct Drive). The program itself has two basic parts, a calendar (Appointment Diary) and an alarm portion (Smart Alarms). I'll briefly review each, their installation, how I used it, and the pros/cons of the program.
SYSTEM INSTILLATION
Instillation is straight-forward, with good instructions in the manual and helpful screen guides, also. Utilization is best with a hard disk; the other choices are to dedicate one system disk to be your "Start-up disk" that has Smart Alarms and the Diary installed, or constantly update whatever other disks have the program in the System. Multiple disk installation is not a problem, however, since this is a non-copy protected program. Multiple Appointment books can even be used, as long as each are named differently. For example, various people in an office can each have one if identified by a unique file-name. To install onto a hard disc you must mount without booting the disk, i.e. use another System disk. Dragging the Appointments and Reminders files into the system folder gives it the fastest access possible when the DA is called up.
CALENDAR
The calendar is the least impressive application of the two (but is no slouch) since there are other good calendar DA's around, especially as shareware. This is a good one, with several nice features. Fig. 1 shows the calendar window.
The months and the year are changed similar to the Notepad format, by clicking on the upturned corner. The current month is always displayed on top. Clicking on the day/time area at the very top will return the calendar to the current date, no matter where you are. The area to the left of the calendar is the "note" areas. It can hold up to 32K for each date, enough that you can use it for a diary, if you so desire. It has search capability, using the Find command, which can also be keyed from the keyboard. The scroll-box also works. All the "standard" mouse and keyboard editing capabilities are supported, as are tabs.
Other features of note are Auto Layout, which places the same layout on days that have no text already entered on it. This will not erase previous daily text entries, but will duplicate the exact layout, so be careful not to make a mistake here or all of your days will have the same mistake, whether you want them or not. Erasing them can be a major pain; I made this error and had to begin all my entries again with a new Appointment Diary. It can automatically open the note area to a larger size than the one initially seen, too. If you have a unique schedule on one day of the week , the Day Layout feature will create that layout for that specific day. The years included are 1904-2039, the years installed in the alarm clock of the System. Print Day does just that, and can also be keyed from the keyboard.
ALARMS
Now to the unique portion of this program. You can have your Mac tell you when something needs to be done, remind you of your mother-in-law's birthday, etc. Up to 1600 reminders can be placed in this file, from 5 minutes up to 50 years in the future. A reminder screen will appear at the time you designate, by clicking on the appropriate buttons in the upper left corner; similar to the Alarm clock. If no time is selected, the default time is 6:00 am the day of the reminder. Advance warning can also be used to give you the lead time you need for getting your wife that anniversary gift, from 5 minutes to two weeks. You can change the screen selections, but you must alter the program itself. If the letters A (anniversary) or B (birthday) are in the reminder, a cake and candles will appear in the reminder! The reminder window will appear in whatever application you are running, with the possibility of modem/other application interruption possible, although the company denies it. If you are in Switcher at the time that the reminder screen appears, you can switch out; however the silly thing just will not disappear; it will stay on the screen that it originally appeared on, and it will KEEP ON RINGING. To avoid this, take care of it at once; watch out, procrastinators! You can ask the program to delay the reminder when the screen appears, from 5 minutes to 24 hours later. The reminder window size cannot be changed, and since it occupies the whole screen, you are prevented from working on the reminder and the diary ( or any other window ) at the same time.
The beauty of this two program combination is that you can cut/copy from the calendar and paste onto the reminders file, entering the data only once. You cannot, however, copy from the reminders to the calendar file. Yearly updates are somewhat awkward. Although they are easily changed, it would be helpful to have a function key that allowed you to sequentially add to the reminder, so that you could keep track of how old your children really are!
The program itself interfaced well with the Mac interface. There are some helpful hints in the back of the manual for trouble-shooting. Some recent additions are quitting by use of command-W, and a better interface with the program Tempo (which consistently crashed the system prior to recent modifications).
The public-domain program "Sleep" is included in the disk for use if you leave your Mac on for extended periods of time; I really didn't use it that much, although others do. I used the program to keep my schedule straight, not an easy task. To get the best use of the program, you must use it consistently, and adapt the formats to your needs.
BAD NEWS, Bears.
Now for the big finale, which you may not like. SMART ALARMS (not the calendar) WILL NOT WORK WITH THE NEW SYSTEM (4.0/4.1). I have tried to contact Imagine, but the message hasn't quite gotten through. When you select it from the DA list, the system freezes, and you must re-boot. I hope this will be corrected, since changing the system and reloading the DA won't do the trick. I still have it in my DA file, and if I hear about it, you will be the first to know. Otherwise, the most unique feature of this application is lost; until it is corrected, I would advise you to use the shareware versions of calendar.
